The invention relates to a motor vehicle with a lowered piston engine supported on a vehicle body structure in the area of the front axle of the vehicle wherein the piston engine includes a drive shaft, particularly a crankshaft, with a drive wheel and a torque converter unit, particularly an automatic transmission, having an input shaft on which an input wheel is mounted.
In such motor vehicles, the position of the piston engine is in close relationship with the position of the torque converter unit because of a direct torque transfer. At the same time, the position of the torque converter unit, particularly in the vertical direction, is essentially given since the torque converter unit extends into the area of the passenger compartment of the motor vehicle or is disposed in close vicinity of this area. Correspondingly, particularly the vertical position of the piston engine depends on the position of the torque converter unit whereby the distance between the piston engine and the engine compartment hood disposed above are particularly small. In today's passenger cars, this distance is hardly more than 25 mm. As a result, in case of a collision of the motor vehicle with a person, there is only a small deformation clearance for the engine hood so that there is a correspondingly high injury potential for a person involved in such collision.
DE 40 29 058 C2 discloses a motor vehicle with a rear piston engine. The piston engine is connected by way of a clutch to a torque converter unit in the form of a manual gear shift transmission, wherein the clutch and the transmission are connected coaxially and directly to the drive shaft of the piston engine. For changing the center of gravity of the piston engine in the motor vehicle, the drive shaft of the engine is not coaxial with the crank shaft of the piston engine but an additional shaft is supported within the engine and coupled to the crankshaft by a pair of spur gears.
It is the object of the present invention to provide, by as simple means as possible, a motor vehicle with a piston engine whose position in the vehicle body is flexible so that it can be positioned as far as possible away from adjacent vehicle body components.